you have to be a little bit crazy to survive

Entries tagged with clothing

I was apparently living with other people and had gotten a Kickstarter game in the mail which someone else had opened (rude much?). The game was called Plague, and it came with at least two books for rules and story background, one of which was a board book with game board elements that could be removed from it somehow. I didn't get that far because I was trying to find all the pieces of the game that had been spread out by whoever opened it.

The art style of the game was sort of art deco / noir in shades of dark orange, brown, and black. The illustrations were cartoony but in that high-class sort of Americanized anime way (think Batman the Animated Series but even more art deco). The premise of the game had something to do with a dinner party at a rich mansion, and player characters possibly ending up dying of different plague-based diseases, one of which could create zombies from the corpses. I finally found the game box itself, which included a bunch of vaguely Barbie (or specifically Ken)-sized clothing, because part of the game was to search for clues and find as many pieces of the party host's clothes as you could, since he would disappear at some point in the game.

There were more small pieces of clothing near the box but I was uncertain if they were doll clothes from actual dolls, and not a part of the game. I was picking up some of those as well just in case when the dream changed to something unrelated.

Ah right, and earlier on in this dream (which was one big illogical mess), I'd received notice in the same day's mail of being awarded something that had to do with Shakespeare. There was a certificate and everything in a large envelope. It took me a while to figure out it was because I had donated money to some kind of Shakespeare thing online, and that the company/charity/whatever sent these things out to anyone who had donated.

Meanwhile, I have no real idea how Plague was put together to form a cohesive game... but I want it! Argh. XD

I was my original character Aster, who is a very beautiful, feminine-looking albino guy. I was wearing a long, sleek, shimmery dress of some sort, and I was at a club at Las Vegas that did a lot of lookalike-celebrity type shows.

I met someone who was a Frank Sinatra impersonator, and boy did he look and act the part. We decided to try and sneak backstage for some vaguely smexytimes... and it was rather dark back there and there was a lot of random props and equipment taking up most of the space. I was waiting for "Frank" to kiss me...

...then logic went to heck and lost the point of what we'd been wanting to do, and the rest isn't worth getting into... but for a few moments there, that was a pretty darn cool dream. :3

(Please note this is a dream just in case it isn't obvious enough. This is in no way a review or actual event description of any Soom products, service, or shipping, nor does it reflect those aspects of any other doll company. I haven't had a doll dream in ages, and then suddenly this nonsense hits. O.o;; )

In reality, I run the Soom 2012 Teenie Gem free choice event waiting room list at the Den of Angels doll forum. This dream took that concept, but turned it into a huge group order, and apparently almost everyone in the group order lived in the same area I did. Also, it wasn't a mix and match MD event but some kind of very last Teenie Gem MD doll that came out just before Soom stopped doing monthly dolls. I remember the names of the two dolls (boy and girl versions) were something close to Trachy and Lami but that wasn't it.

The big day of the mass order arriving had come, and some of the girls who had ordered with me were there to open the boxes. It wasn't a typical box opening, like everyone figuring out whose doll box was whose. There weren't even individual doll boxes, just a bunch of dolls and clothes packed in generic square-ish shipping boxes. This didn't strike me as odd in the dream somehow.

There didn't seem to be any organization to the stuff in the boxes, dolls and fantasy parts and clothing strewn all over. The dolls and fantasy parts were at least wrapped in bubble wrap. When I unwrapped the bubble wrap from a random doll, I was shocked by the faceup. Mind you, the doll's face was vinyl instead of resin (and I didn't actually notice that as being wrong until after waking up), and looked like it might have been a sleeping or no-eyes version of a mini DDung doll, with just a smooth area where the eyes were meant to be painted on, and a small point for the nose.

The faceup looked like it had been drawn on with either permanent marker or generic felt-tipped pen. Not only that, but it was done in an extremely messy style, which one could either call "kindergartener" or "someone trying to be reeeally artsy and hoping it flies." One of the other girls was looking at the doll with me, I think she was supposed to be geishacookie from the forum (dream made up what she looked like xD ). I said, "This can't be right... I'm going to look up the faceups on the site." I was so shocked about receiving the doll like that, that I was starting to doubt my own memory of what we ordered, even though I vaguely remembered cute Soom faceups and open eyes.

This also got me thinking, as I was trying to navigate the dream version of Soom's site (which was pretty nuts and didn't make much sense), that the dolls had sleeping heads and normal, open-eyed heads. Why was the sleeping head on one of the dolls by default? Were there more like this? I finally found the right page for the dolls we'd ordered, except it was broken down into a menu system that was missing the main pictures page. I found that a bit fishy, but finally found one of the main pictures after a little more searching.

The dolls looked like proper dolls on the site (and what my dream-memory said they should look like). The boy one was light blue and the girl one was light pink. The doll I'd opened was pretty much white, but I didn't actually notice that problem at the time (just went "wtf" after waking up). The pictures also showed the clothes, which was good because the other girls were trying to sort through the boxes and match up clothing items for the fullsets. Each fullset doll had two outfits, and for some reason a couple of my own random Yo-SD doll clothes and some 1/6 Obitsu-type shoes had gotten mixed in with everything on the floor where the sorting was taking place.

I didn't seem to reach any sort of definite conclusion about the faceups yet, distracted by going over to help sort the doll stuff some more. I had a bad feeling we were missing dolls and probably clothing, and yet this was supposed to be the whole shipment. I remember picking a red sheer-fabric jacket out of the clothing mess that was one of my non-Soom pieces, and a black lacy shirt of some sort. My kid sister showed up out of the blue and made a joke about the 1/6 Obitsu shoes, which were mostly black boots now in a Ziplock bag (they hadn't been before). I don't remember what she said, only that it was funny and possibly sarcastic, considering the mess the group order was turning out to be.

(This is apparently what happens after I spend 3+ hours on Skype talking to someone I met via Cry's video game livestreams, before going to bed. That someone would be Hiro, who you will be seeing here shortly. O.o )

I was playing some kind of coop multiplayer Amnesia-like game with Hiro via both the game client and chatting with Skype, except that instead of normal Amnesia: The Dark Descent with its medieval castle interior, the concept was to run around a modern day mental hospital plagued with monsters (the zombie ones from the Amnesia game) and avoid being caught by them or the regular staff while looking for books. Hiro's character was an Asian boy in his early teens and I was a girl with long-ish blonde hair; I think I'd gone with Alice for my character's name.

The building's layout was bizarre for an actual hospital. Hallways were ridiculously skinny, had maze-like branches all over the place and interconnected rooms, and you couldn't do anything about the lights that were always on. Everything was painted white, so there was no real chance of hiding anywhere in the open. Not only would the monsters cause you to pass out if they caught you, but doctors and nurses also wandered the hall and any of them including the monsters catching you meant waking back up in your room. I can't remember if the rooms were locked by default, I just remember it being so much backtracking that you didn't want to get caught, plus there was a feeling of impending doom like something bad was going to happen if you couldn't escape the place in time.

The point of the books was that they somehow unlocked doors. The books were hardcover, red, and had gold filigree designs on the covers that were all the same. If I remember right, they all had a four digit number on the first page while the rest of the pages were blank, which had to do with how they opened the doors. Some books were fakes and only the right ones would actually open a door at all, and only the door they were meant to. The books could be found in closets or refrigerators that were otherwise empty of anything else, and if you had one that worked with you when you opened the right door, the door would just automatically unlock itself.

I remember being in a small room that had a fridge and two closets, and Hiro took a book out of the fridge while I grabbed one from a closet. At this point it was becoming real as opposed to a video game, although I still had some odd fuzzy concept of an inventory system so that I wasn't literally carrying the books around (I had several by now), they just vanished but I still "had them." I remember hearing a monster grumbling out in the hall right at that moment. The hall went around the room outside past two different doors on opposite ends. Hiro told me to go one way and he'd go the other and distract the monster.

I didn't like this idea but he was already out the one door so I ran through the other. I realized somehow that he'd been caught by the staff and I kept running, as for some reason they were assuming Hiro was the only patient not in his room. He'd bought me some time, but now I had to figure out how to put it to good use and if I stayed in the halls I still ran the risk of getting caught at random. I found a nurse's bathroom and hid under the sink. The idea was to burn some time so the staff would get complacent and maybe enough would go to sleep after-hours so I could finally escape.

Logic really started falling apart at this point (apparently if you stay in one place in a dream for too long, small constant changes start building up into ridiculousness). What started as a long counter with sinks in it and one big cupboard area underneath with several doors (my hiding spot was as far into the corner opposite the entry door by the far end of the sinks as possible), slowly turned into just a counter without the cupboard underneath, and then finally the counter had some kind of tablecloth which hid me better. I remember spending a lot of time trying to make sure I was as squeezed into the corner as it got, and that the white dress I was wearing was staying hidden with me instead of flared out partly so it was visible from beyond the counter.

This whole time I was dreading that someone would actually come into the bathroom, and yes, eventually a nurse and a nurse's assistant walked in, both women. For some reason, they had a bunch of dirty dishes on a two-tiered rolling metal cart. The assistant started shoving dishes under the counter and it was obvious she could see me, but I sat there and thought "You can't see me, you can't see me," over and over. At this point I vaguely understood that I was in a dream and that logic had broken enough she shouldn't have seen me right off the bat.

She didn't say anything to her superior who was blathering on about various gossip and directions for the next shift or something, and I realized it wasn't because I was desperately trying to insist in my head that she couldn't see me. The assistant wasn't evil, and knew this place was way more than just some honest asylum. She kept glancing at me but only crammed more dishes under the counter (I could hardly move for all the dishes). Suddenly the nurse in charge started saying really crazy things, like she was hallucinating and what she saw was no longer what anyone else in the room saw. The nurse stood still and started staring off at nothing as what she was saying rambled to a halt, and the assistant looked at me and mouthed the word, "Run."

I managed to extricate myself from the dishes without making any noise and ran out of the bathroom, not noticed at all by the crazy spaced-out nurse. I found a new hallway that led to a large closet, and inside the closet was a whole lot of hanging lab coats. I couldn't see the back of the closet, so I kept pushing through and the lab coats gave way to winter jackets and I found myself suddenly breaking out of a very thick display of such coats in a clothing store at a shopping mall.

There were tables just beyond, possibly for a cafe in this same store (logic, what is this concept? we don't do logic in dreams). There were randomly dream created family members there who recognized me and greeted me only like it was any old day, not like I'd been locked away in the funny farm. They didn't know, and I myself wasn't even sure how I'd gotten locked up there now. While they asked me mundane questions I said something to the effect of, "Listen, I've just escaped from a mental asylum up there on the hill," and pointed off in the general direction of where the hospital was (you couldn't see it from inside the mall).

They were all like, "Yeah right, very cute ha ha," and I said, "No, I'm serious, and I'm not even sure that I'm really out of there at all." I had a bad feeling that I was still somewhere in the asylum while hallucinating what I was seeing now, or somehow had my "spirit" split between the places and maybe I could actually tell these people something useful before waking back up in the asylum. I just hoped I was still hidden somewhere instead of stuck in my room again. I remember one dark-haired guy who was a random family friend looking off in the general direction of the hospital, he was starting to be convinced there was more to this.

I was Riddick in a prison on a world that seemed to be half futuristic technology and half medieval. The immediate prison area definitely looked ancient, floor and walls of old-style stone and some of the cells were open behind walls of black iron bars and some had wooden doors and proper stone walls. The lighting wasn't very good, and I had an almost modern-day Earth orange prisoner jump suit on. My cell had a wooden door, the cell to the right of me was larger and the more open-style. It also contained several prisoners, while I was alone.

I don't remember how I unlocked my door, but I do remember watching a guard who was taunting the prisoners in the next cell. The guard had punkish black leather clothes almost like he'd walked out of Mad Max. I had some kind of vaguely-sharp metal instrument and managed to get close enough to the guard before he noticed me, and slit his throat. Bad day to be a guard.

I looted his pockets first while the other prisoners made entirely too much noise congratulating me on my feat. I wanted to take the guard's clothes too but I was afraid there were more unfriendlies on the way, so I gathered up the miscellaneous stuff I'd found on him so far. But since no hacks showed up in the next few moments I pulled the guard's pants off as well while still holding the stuff (dream logic was failing very badly here, physics be damned). Somehow I also managed to get dressed at this point. Yeah. Oh, and I had this odd jacket thing on now, that was only like leather straps on the front in an X and on the back was the British flag embossed in color on leather. There was the thought that I'd already had that in my possession, though.

Now I needed to hide for a minute and found what seemed to be some kind of janitor's closet nearby, though it had a small window in it. I shut the door and dumped the stuff I'd acquired on a wooden counter. There were a couple more-useful knives, some odd almost surgical-looking knife things that had short round-ended blades with serrations along the ends as well, and other stuff that skipped my attention for the moment. There was a light in the room, a glass lantern with a bright candle-like flame in it, and I didn't want the light attracting attention so I opened the lantern and tried to blow out the flame. For some reason there remained a very slight, tiny blue luminescence where the flame had been, just floating there.

In the stuff the guard had, there was a small clear box about 2 inches wide by 2 inches tall by 1 inch deep. I was able to trap the light in the box, and then stepped out of the closet long enough to chuck the thing in the general direction of the other prisoners and said something to the effect of "Enjoy." I figured I was better off with the distracting light over by them, should other guards show up.

Back in the closet-room I was about to look through the stolen stuff better when I noticed the stupid light was back on again and just as bright as it had originally started.

This dream made so very little sense I won't get into some of the details, plus some parts I'd rather forget, but at one point I was on a basketball court where a bunch of people were meeting each other during a break in a basketball game (half time? I have no idea). One of these people happened to be Vin Diesel, and as I remember... we were introduced and of all things ended up discussing shoes. I had finally gotten new shoes (something I need to do in real life, the combat boots I tried to order ended up discontinued by the manufacturers, argh!!!) and I liked them but I remember wondering something along the lines of how comfortable they'd be once my feet decided for sure if they liked them or not.

Anyways, other than the topic of my shoes I seriously don't know what else we talked about, though the concept of dating came up, I just can't remember the context. I think my own personal wishes were clashing with the non-logic of the dream and making the subconscious mess even more confusing. Then I think he went on to talk to someone else or something and my kid brother needed my help with something, leading me off the court.

There were more children near the wall beyond the sideline, they'd been playing there for a while. It turns out one of them was climbing too high along a wall and nobody else was paying attention beyond the kids, so there I was trying to tell someone to go get more help and the daredevil kid to get down or not to jump (cuz he'd definitely hurt himself) and he had this wild look in his eye that said he was thinking about it anyways. I stayed right below him thinking I could catch him if he did jump without either of us getting hurt badly... maybe... and then suddenly he completely vanished.

I knew he'd just materialized over in a dark room just off the basketball gym (don't ask me how) so I snuck over there in the ensuing confusion to ask him how he'd done that. I knew it was some kind of magic, it had to be, and I wanted to learn to do it too. He said he could unlock it in me or something like that, and would show me how. I agreed to this, and then the logic really fell apart so I'm just gonna skip the rest.

The entire first part of this dream was total crap and shall thus be ignored, but eventually I looked out a window in my mother's house (random dream house) and saw that a huge storm had approached, including several funnel clouds. I said something to her as she was elsewhere in the house about it, and how we were all in danger, and she said something about everybody getting to a safe spot in the house. And I was staring at this huge dark underside of the cloud and realizing how outlandish the whole thing was... and then said, "No, it's okay, this is a dream." She kept saying we needed to get safe, and I ignored her and climbed out the window.

I decided I was Riddick, and I had to find Stefan (the alternate universe 17-year-old version of Lord Recluse from City Of Villains that a friend of mine roleplays ♥ ). Stefan was out here somewhere and I had to find him. I kept calling out his name and running along the grass of a very large field that pretty much seemed to stretch to the horizon, except for maybe a forest somewhere to what felt like the west. It was a bit hazy out now, and I don't remember being worried about the weather anymore. I had too many clothes on for Riddick, technically, and I knew that was left over from the previous parts of the dream. I didn't care, I took some of it off (like a jacket) and threw it away and kept shouting and running. The problem now was that being lucid, I was too close to awake. I did wake up partly, and lost the dream, though I tried hard to get back to it or remember that I was trying to find Stefan should I enter a different dream.

I did the latter, managing to enter the next dream as Riddick properly (that's probably a first), and kept remembering what I had to do. I was now beside a house near a short cliff that led to a stream that emptied into the ocean; it was overcast. The beach wasn't one of those white-sand ones, more like... grey sand and a few scraggly plants. I kept looking for Stefan, going down a trail along the cliffside, but then I heard him call to me. He was back up the trail somewhere, up in the yard of the house? I called back, "Where are you?" and he said, "In the gazebo."

I went back up the trail and was worried I wouldn't see such a thing (as I didn't remember it being there before and I still partly knew this was a dream). But there it was, across the yard closer to the ocean. There were people in it, but as I approached I noticed it was two or three teenage girls, and the gazebo changed into some weird kind of similarly-shaped building made of metal with huge glass windows on my side, and an elevator inside. The girl closest to me was Asian and said something I don't remember anymore, and I decided the elevator was my best shot for finding Stefan.

I got in, and it seems like I knew this was a place I wasn't really allowed to go. I remember the controls only seemed to have one button (1st floor, which was where we were??). I was lost as to what to do for a moment, then a couple guys in suits with briefcases got in and used a key to start the elevator. I sorta just stood there like "yeah I'm supposed to be here, duh" and the elevator went down into the ground.

The floor I got off on opened into a cafeteria, and people were serving pizza there. I remember my real-life allergies suddenly seemed like an issue (poor Riddick ^^; ) and then I decided, what the heck, I'd eat some. I had no idea where Stefan was and I was hungry. (Dream logic was also sorta failing badly by this point.) There were other people getting a slice too, and the servers had said it was free because they'd made it and some gathering had canceled and they weren't going to waste it.

I sat down on a bench beside a wall near the food line and suddenly Stefan was there too! Right beside me. I was glad to have found him even if it didn't make much sense, and since we were right by the food, he got a slice too at my urging. I said we should eat before anything else happened as it seems like it'd been ages since we'd had any proper sort of meal. We sat together on the bench eating and I think I asked him what was going on or if he was okay.

(The initial intro here is the built-in past that came with my dream self. The part of the dream I remember begins with the alien prison system.)

I was myself, but an ultimate future version. Apparently I'd overcome my difficulties and excelled even physically far enough to join the US military. I'm not sure how old I was, but it didn't seem like it mattered because I was in such good shape. I was respected in my unit and had done great things. I'd patterned myself after the military version of Vin Diesel's movie characters and considered him my role model, so much so that I probably thought almost like he did.

But then aliens had attacked earth. (They looked like Covenant Elite from Halo 2, which I played quite a bit of yesterday.) We fought back but it was a losing battle. So many died, but some of us were captured. Quite a few, in fact. The aliens shipped us all to another planet and stuck us in a prison made for slave labor.

Our first test was to climb down this very long strange grating that led eventually to the prison floor. The thing was probably at least fifteen stories high. Anybody who fell died and wasn't considered worthy of living or working for the aliens. This task was easy enough and I progressed downwards quicktly. Two guys by me were talking even while a loud PA system kept repeating rules like "Absolutely no talking." They tried to get me to talk too, I whispered a couple things and then decided it wasn't worth the risk and shut up. I didn't even look at them anymore, I wasn't gonna get in trouble. The other guys kept talking and I listened intently as they discussed a rumor about someone having escaped from this prison some time ago. The guy was legendary for having done it and it was supposed to be impossible, all the guards said so and denied the escape rumor. I latched onto this idea, believing it fully, and knew if anyone was getting out again, it'd be me.

It wasn't long before the guys near me got fried by flying alien-built robot things for talking. They fell and were probably already dead before they hit bottom; I didn't watch, I concentrated on my descent. I made it to the ground floor unscathed and stayed put in a courtyard where guards watched everyone coming down. The guards were human, but not earth human... I knew there was some sort of evil human race beyond our planet who was allied with the aliens. (There are in fact no more Halo-2-ish aliens visible from this point on in the dream.)

Once everyone in my group was down, the guards started dividing us into two groups. There were two guards in charge of this and one was female. She and I were the only females on the floor. The male guard asked my name and I told him "Tirsden." I figured there was no point in using my earth name (Kat/Katrina) and my online alias would be best now. If I had a choice about anything, they'd call me what I wanted them to call me. The guard pointed to the farther group and told me to join them. I was half way across the floor when the female guard said she had something important to tell him and he told me to stop. I did and stood there apparently just being obedient but I listened hard and could just make out the conversation (my hearing was very good, obviously better than they thought).

The woman said that she'd accidentally found one of the "eyes" that the higher ups used to see the "invisible ones" in the hallways. The male guard thought this was very interesting but told her to talk to him again later, they had work to do. Meanwhile I'm thinking this lady has an unscheduled date with me as soon as possible so I can snag this "eye." And now I knew there was some sort of secret backup security system. I could imagine floating monstrocities in prison barracks hallways silently killing inmates lucky enough to make it that far while trying to escape. It was an easy guess none of the prisoners knew about this... except the unlucky dead ones.

The male guard told me to continue on to my group and I obeyed. We were all marched through a passage to another smaller courtyard. There was a yellow line painted across the middle of it. The PA was still blaring repetative rules, "No talking... No fighting..." No this, no that. Be good little inmates. The guard ordered us to line up on the yellow line and face to the right (straight along the line). I did this and a few others complied just as quickly. Some others straggled. The guard didn't immediately react, he just watched, so one of them got particularly cocky. This mean, short, ugly guy wanted to pick a fight with me, hoping to get me in trouble. He told me I was in his spot; I ignored him. He tried various insults as I stood there being a good little inmate. He got really pissed at my continued indifference and shoved me. I kept my feet and remained where I was, didn't even turn to him.

The guard walked up to me and said, "Put him in his place." Before the idiot behind me knew what happened I'd spun around and he was on the ground beside the line, face pressed painfully into the ground and completely incapacitated. I'd broken a bone or two in key locations. He blubbered like a baby and wet himself. He wouldn't be moving within the next few minutes so I got right back up, performed a perfect military salute to the guard, and got back into my place in line as if nothing had happened. I wasn't even winded, just stood there calmly with rigid military posture.

The guard was obviously impressed. And that was the point of all this apparent obedience. I wanted to make it look like I was extremely adaptable and ready to prove my allegience to the new reigning power. If the people I worked for before couldn't keep control then they didn't deserve it and I was ready to be recruited by the other side. In reality though I was only going to play their game long enough to get them back big-time. But I shoved that thought deep down and made sure I kept in character. I was a good little inmate. I wanted to be more. But I didn't expect to be rewarded until I had proved my worth. So I was a good little inmate.

The guard ordered us all to move again and as we went down the next passage I heard other guards take care of the moron on the ground with precision that brought screams and the finality of silence. We passed some windows where we could see a gigantic, highly-mechanized assembly line creating strange looking robots and who-knows-what. We could see prisoners working the line and somebody died because they were stupid and didn't move fast enough; part of the machinery flattened them coldly. We continued on down more passages and soon found ourselves in a very earth-like locker room. The guard told us to change into uniforms readily available in the lockers. He also said we could talk to each other now if we wanted. He left and there were no other guards in the room. I reached for a uniform, they were all the same (in different sizes) and were mostly bright-yet-light yellow with similarly-shaded orange trim and some white too. They were simple yet semi-futuristicly cut one-piece jumpsuits. I couldn't help but think of the outfits from the XBox game The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay except these looked better.

I was the only woman still but changing out of my clothes and into the new ones didn't phase me, I was used to it from military days. Plus I knew our captors were watching on what looked like closed circuit cameras in the ceilings but I guessed they probably had far more advanced technology spying on us as well. Everyone's conversation was rather guarded because of the cameras. I'd just finished suiting up and was talking to a black guy with crazy hair when all of a sudden Candy shows up. (My real-life family's cat! Geez she's been showing up in dreams a lot lately lol.) I was very surprised to see her at this point... how'd she manage that? Since she was there I wanted to be sure she remained safe and I figured the alien guys wouldn't like her at all and would probably kill her since she was virtually useless. (If I reference aliens from now on I'm really meaning the human version; I thought of them all as aliens.)

I held Candy and she was very cuddly and obviously scared but happy to be with me. A moment later the male guard came back into the room and walked over, saying I was to come with him. I asked him if my black friend could look after Candy and the guard said yes. Apparently I'd impressed him enough that he'd let the cat live at least as well as it could with a random inmate. Since I was being singled out I had a feeling I wasn't coming back here. I handed the kitty to the black guy and followed the guard out of the room. Good luck, Candy...

The guard directed me down hallways, keeping me in the lead. (At this point I became Richard B. Riddick, yay! I love being him in dreams. And dream logic didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with this; it's like I'd been him the whole time. Even back when I was in the military and then fighting aliens on earth.) The guard was following me with his gun trained on my back. He wasn't stupid even if he was impressed with me. I ended up in a round room with a lighted floor and ceiling. Windows were set into the walls and the only places that had no windows were where the doors were. There were about four doors total. The room was quite bright but it was hard to see past the windows; they were tinted to look darker.

The guard handed me a golden bracelet with a shiny red stone in the middle of it. It was thick in the middle and had one straight edge on the bottom and the other side was pointed out like an upside-down "V." He told me how to put it on and I placed it on my right wrist as directed. The pointed part came up over the back of my hand some. The entire thing was rather beautiful if simplistic and very shiny. The stone was not facetted but smooth, set so far in that its top rounded surface was raised just slightly above the rest of the bracelet. The stone was somewhat tear-shaped and longer than rounder. The point of it was set the same direction as the point of the bracelet (straight out) and in roughly the center of the top area.

The guard told me to stay there and I stood still in the middle of the room looking at the bracelet. He left and the door hissed shut. I saw him enter a control room on the far side of the windows and then the room got even brighter. I looked back at the bracelet and it was melting, moving, like mercury; like the stuff Neo gets on his hand when he touches the mirror in The Matrix. Even the red stone was running and merging with the gold stuff. It covered my hand but didn't move up my arm. It started to hurt. It was melting into my skin! Merging with me.

I tried to keep calm but nausea threatened to overwhelm me. The pain was becoming intense and it was moving through my body now, like the gold stuff was in my bloodstream. I found myself on my knees. I didn't want to freak out... I wanted to continue to impress the guard. I could deal with this. I could. I... I fell over and curled up, just living through the pain, the only outward signs that I was hurting were the grimace on my face and my rapid breathing. I couldn't move anymore. I passed out.

* * *

I'm not sure how long I'd been asleep when I woke up. I felt terribly groggy and had the impression I'd woken up a few times before but not with any real lucidity. I was able to get to my knees and there was no sound, the room was back to its original brightness before the whole bracelet thing. The bracelet! I looked at my wrist and it was there but it was different now, the red stone was visible but it was like the whole thing had become a permanent part of my hand. It was solid metal yet didn't interfere with my wrist movement. I wondered if it had replaced some of my wrist bones with metal or biomechanics. I couldn't tell, it just looked... kinda pretty. But manly pretty. (LMAO the things I think in dreams, eh? I was thinking it looked like something He-Man or Conan the Barbarian would wear.)

Nothing had happened so far, it was silent and I couldn't see the guard or anyone else in the control room. I couldn't really see through the windows at all, it was very dark behind them. Maybe someone was there. But there was something weirder much closer to me. There was blue slimy stuff on the floor. It was spread out like I'd been thrashing in it. I had a feeling it had something to do with what the bracelet had done. The word that came to mind was "transformation." I touched the blue stuff, it reminded me of shampoo in texture. It didn't seem harmful. I had a feeling it had come out of me somehow; apparently I didn't need it anymore.

Then there was a voice in my head. It was Cortana!

(And now I must take a moment to explain what the dream logic was doing at this point. Cortana is a female computer AI system from the game Halo 2, she speaks to the character you play through his helmet system. She can be transferred to other computer systems by touch through your suit and she provides information, witty comments, and sometimes unlocks doors. In the dream it appears Cortana was being used to guide people in the military during the battle against the aliens. I knew now that she'd been there "in my head" in an implant that communicated her words directly to my brain. She could also see anything I could see and had very limited control of my muscles if needed. She'd lost contact with me when I'd been captured by the aliens and was only now able to reestablish contact.)

Cortana sounded extremely surprised to find me alive and said so. She was glad, but where was I? What was going on? Was I okay? ...Why was I not responding? All she could tell right now was that I was still looking at the blue stuff on the floor. I had to think fast through the grogginess that still plagued me. If I didn't respond somehow she might think I'd been brainwashed or was unsavable and she would then cut off all contact with me forever for security reasons. But if I talked, and there was someone in the control room, they would know something was up. I couldn't let them know Cortana was talking to me and it was pretty obvious they didn't know or they'd be in here now. They'd probably kill me. I ran my fingers through the goop on the floor in frustration... and then I knew what to do.

I drew a happy face very quickly, staring at it intently, and whiped it out of existence. Cortana realized what I was trying to say... that I was okay but couldn't talk and/or was being watched. I don't remember the conversation very well now (writing and reading in dreams is hard) but it seems like my limited method of communication had only limited success. I wrote someone's name, a higher-up, wondering if they were alive and hadn't been captured. Cortana made me whipe the name away very quickly. Apparently it was crucial that name not be seen at all. I got the hint. Maybe they had been captured but the aliens didn't really know who they were looking for and the person had remained anonymous so far. I wrote "President?" as well and Cortana made me whipe it out again. Then she cut out in mid-sentence. I'd lost the signal again... and the lights got brighter in the room. The guards were apparently noticing I was awake. That was all, it seems.

I could now see the male guard from before on the other side of the control room windows. He spoke into the PA and said I was going to be tested. They wanted to see how well my conversion had gone. I realized that while I was asleep, some built-in system in the technology on my wrist had trained me in it's proper use. (I think this is a random reference to a similar concept in the game Morrowind when you get the wristguard you need to beat the game.) I was feeling better now, in fact I felt just fine.

The room changed, it reminded me of the holodecks on Star Trek. The walls got wider, making the room bigger, and dirt and rocks appeared on the ground. The doors hissed open and a dozen zombie-like crazy humans stumbled in. They took one look at me and charged. They were not slow/stupid zombies but fast/smart zombies. Eh oh. Oh well, bring it on! In top shape this would be a challenge but doable. But now... I kicked serious ass and I kicked it fast. I was thoroughly surprised at my improved strength, stamina, and speed. I could even think faster, and fighting a dozen crazy things was actually easy. They were all dead before five minutes had passed. The zombies faded as if transported somewhere else and I stood there waiting, barely even winded and pretty psyched up.

The guard voiced his approval and congratulations, and then one door hissed open again. In came a very big, strong, pissed-off looking guy. He came after me and this fight was much tougher than the last even though it was only one guy. It was hard to do any damage to him and I spent most of my time avoiding his fists because I had a bad feeling one solid hit would spell doom. In the end I used all my fighting expertise and agility to take him out with one deft hit to a specific spot in his neck. He fell like a ton of lead and I snapped his neck. Sucked to be him. He too disappeared into thin air. Somebody had a nasty clean-up job wherever all these bodies were going. I waited again, I was feeling some wear now but still ready for anything.

I was on the far side of the room from the windows with the guard at this point. The guard voiced his approval again and said my final test was next. There was a slanted rock over near the control room. Someone began to materialize there, instead of walking in through the doors. Oh god no... it was my best buddy from the military, the guy I'd fought alongside against the aliens. I thought he was dead... and yet, I knew this was him. It wasn't some illusion or hologram or lookalike. This was real. They expected me to kill my own buddy and thereby leave behind everything from my old life. In fact, if I didn't kill him fast, my hesitation would clue them in that I wasn't already completely loyal to them.

As I moved towards him I could see that he was lying there very awkwardly; he was paralyzed, his back was probably broken. He was staring at me, confused and afraid but glad to see me. I'm not even sure he could move or talk at all, just look at me. He thought... maybe I was going to save him.

(At this point my brain replayed the following moments until it was happy with the end results, like loading and reloading a saved game in a computer game.)

(First time)

I walked up to him and looked down at him. His look of hope turned to a look of haunting disbelief as I reached down and started to strangle him. He eventually stopped breathing but it felt like an eternity to me as he stared up at me with that heartbreaking look on his face. I knew exactly when to let go so that maybe his body would force him to breathe again after a few minutes, or if he was lucky someone would find him soon enough to resuscitate him. I let go and stood up. He was technically dead. But no, I didn't like this version...

(Second time)

I walked up more quickly this time as if this wasn't even an issue to me. I started the strangling thing again but a moment later realized how hard it must be to die this way... so I snapped his neck and he died instantly. I wasn't really all that happy with this version either...

(Third and last time)

He looked at me as I approached and I saw a different look this time. It said so many things... like, he knew he was a goner, he knew the aliens were testing me and I'd win their trust if I killed him. He was in pain and dying anyways. He'd much rather I killed him than these alien bastards. I walked straight up to him and snapped his neck. I believed he felt no pain and was finally at rest where the aliens could never hurt him again.

And I knew I'd impressed hell out of the guard and whoever else was watching. I was headed for big things under their wing... and when the moment was right, vengeance. They would pay. Oh yes, they would pay.